Right, brace yourselves, it's time to do the reading week update. So much has happened in between now and my last update, that I should really split it into three or even four bite sized blog posts. But no, two it shall be, it's a good job I don't have a dissertation next year...
I'm going to largely gloss over what happened between the last post and my journey. Actually. No I'm not. I'll begin with my trip to the Russian hairdressers; this was something I've always known was going to happen, but prolonged and prolonged until I looked completely ridiculous. Armed with a photograph of what I WANTED my new hair to look like, the woman grunted in agreement, and asked me to sit down whilst she attempted to recreate it. As it turned out, my new hair looked nothing of the sort; I'd just been through the Russian Haircut-o-matic 2000 and come out with hilariously short hair. Short hair which suddenly made my ears extremely cold.
Later that day was a great night at Lucy's/Zoya's flat. I'd spent half a week intrigued as to exactly this was going to entail. In the end it was a really really good night. Zoya had laid out a really good spread of proper Russian food and then we spent the rest of the night listening to the accordion player who'd come over for the night. That and a long and heavy karaoke session with Rob's guitar. After we'd done with that, we naturally decided to go to Begemot for to continue the night.
I must admit, recalling everything that's happened so far has been pretty hard, even though it was all on one day. But I'll skip to the good bit.
With as much Russian vodka as Estonian import law would permit (one litre :@), and a fully packed bag, it was time to set off. After a brief visit to the bar to say goodbyes and wish everyone good luck on their respective travels (some very impressive places), I boarded the bus from Petrozavodsk Avtovokzal and departed for St Petersburg. My ambitious plan of purposely getting only 3 hours sleep the night before "to make it easier to sleep on the bus", I can see only in hindsight, was totally and utterly flawed from the outset due to the fact that, as I've learnt, it's impossible to sleep on buses anyway. In short, I'm an idiot.
Arriving in St Petersburg at 6am, and already exhausted was not an ideal start, but I'd arrived into the city I'll be living in from February, might as well see if it's alright.
As it turns out, it's more than alright, it's brilliant. It has everything you could possibly need (including thousands of Subways). Sometimes this can be an issue though, as when the Russians sense that you are English, they seem to forget all of their Russian, refusing to speak to you in any language other than impossible to understand properly English. It's literally like talking to someone from Leeds.
The centre of St Petersburg was absolutely brilliant. I was finding it hard to keep myself and my heavy bag occupied for long enough though. Then I remembered that the Hermitage was free with a student card, kind of like a significantly more impressive IC. It was possibly the single most impressive building I've ever seen from the inside. Chandeliers and golden ornaments all over the place. A pretty good way of spending a few hours.
Journey to the centre of the Earth...on an escalator
After part one of St Petersburg came to a close, and once I'd navigated the St Petersburg metro system to Baltijski station, where my bus left to go to Latvia, I still had a bit of a wait left. The St Petersburg metro is absolutely ridiculous in every way. No underground system in the world has to be that deep, it takes literally five minutes to get from the top of an escalator to the bottom, that's just a waste of time, and by which point, the earth's core is presumably about to melt you, so trains arrive almost every thirty seconds. They're also the most ridiculously decorated metro stations I've ever seen. How about keeping your underground stations as shitholes and making Petrozavodsk mint? One thing I'm adamant about from my time so far in Russia, is that I think Russian and Economics is perhaps the exact degree Russia needs as a country.
The absolutely stunning Church of our Saviour on Spilled Blood in St Petersburg...at a stupid time in the morning...
Once on the bus, facing the prospect of my 14 hour journey to Riga, it set off, and I thought "Great, two seats to myself, ample sleeping opportunity". Absolutely not. 5 minutes down the road some hideously fat man took his seat (and most of mine), and all hope was lost.
The most interesting bit of my trip so far happened at the land border with Estonia at Ivangorod-Narva. At the Russian end everyone got off, took their baggage and got it x-ray scanned, all in the presence of numerous guards in winter camo gear and fucking stupid hats. Then when going through passport control, something strange happened.
The mardy woman at the counter took a few looks at my passport picture, me, and my visa picture. Granted, they're all different, but that shouldn't have required a lengthy interview, entirely in Russian for me to somehow try and persuade them that I am all those people on all those pictures. I knew a Russian haircut was a stupid idea, but I didn't think it would have THIS many knock on effects. Slightly terrified, very tired, and wanting to get back onto the bus, I did just that. On the other side of the border in Narva, the Estonian border guards were comparatively very nice. Just one man came round and collected all of our passports, not needing us to even move. Then we were back on our way again.
Arriving in Riga at a ridiculous hour in the morning was probably part of the reason why it was so shit. I was expecting good things from Riga, having heard quite a lot, but I was left thoroughly underwhelmed. Granted, I in the centre of the town for very long, about 3 or 4 hours, but it was probably enough. The English have well and truly taken hold here, for the worse. I can see how it probably WAS a very nice place, but when literally everything is either an Irish bar or a strip club, it's always going to lose a lot of its character.
Feeling very very tired by this point, I arrived at the airport, ready to be shipped into Liverpool on one of Stelios' orangey chariots. The flight felt like it passed in about 5 minutes. The safety announcements were sacked off at about the bit where they said "Even if you've heard this before".
I'm not going to lie, the Scouse accent was quite a welcoming way of reintroducing me to everything after 2 months of Russian. As was the man in his 30s protesting to the non-plussed bus driver that he was only 15.
After a lengthy, and unwanted run from near the cathedral to Lime Street, made the train with about a minute to spare. Then Sheffield beckoned.
I'll leave that there for now. over 1,200 words is far too long for "half" a blog post. More to come later, and I'm sure you'll be on the edge of your seats until then :D
До новых встреч x
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